I left Mannheim today! In the transition phase between two journeys and it always feels a little bit like limbo. We’ve closed a chapter here and are about to start a new one, but haven’t yet.
The sun is shining so wonderfully today! I’ve made it to Stuttgart, where I will fly from tomorrow. Then it’s to London and up to Sherwood Forest (!!) where I will get to spend the weekend with awesome friends, new and old, at the Momentum conference.
The past weeks have really made it really clear to me how much I’ve been blessed with the friends that I have made in Mannheim. A year and a half ago I was nervous about moving to a new city (again) and the future was really unclear. Joh and I were taking time apart to find out what we wanted, university was about to start, I wasn’t sure if my German was up to par, and I had so many loose ends flying around, I wasn’t sure where to begin.
Fast forward and now I am halfway done with my bachelors, we are planning our wedding, I have an awesome group of friends from our small group, and am actually going to be missing Mannheim while we are away! The ladies from our small group (if anyone is interested, our church is called Haus des Herrn!) threw me a bridal party two weeks ago, and it was such a special time to spend with friends I know I will have for years to come. We went to the planetarium (I know…not exactly a bachelorette party activity…but my wish, thank you Damaris!) and then played this awesome game where my friend Krissy had recorded Johannes answering questions about me/us/our relationship. If our answers matched, I got to open a present!
One of my bridesmaids, Dori, couldn’t be there but I know she had a hand in the planning…she had been very pregnant and just had a brand new beautiful baby girl, my “niece” and flower girl. Thank goodness they planned having a girl around my wedding, right? 😉 I look forward to seeing them tonight before they move to England. I am very much hoping that Joh ends up loving it there…two of my bridesmaids within a days journey?! I would be so spoiled. Currently one lives in Alaska, another in Florida, my sister in Nashville and soon to be Uganda, one in Scotland and one in Germany. And they are all honoring me by coming to Colorado for the wedding!
Last weekend I was at a retreat with even more women from our church. It was a really cool experience, and I was able to close a lot of doors through forgiveness to wounds of the past. Called Encounter, the retreat centered around experiencing the forgiveness, freedom, and joy that God gives us through his grace. At first glance it may seem awful to spend a weekend drudging up old baggage from all of our pasts. And not going to lie, it was a very draining time full of emotional highs and lows. But what a relief to decide to leave the past in the past! To forgive! It felt like a huge weight lifted off of my chest, like a great big part of my soul had been cleaned out, lots of old junk thrown away, and those places cleaned and prepared for all that is to come. I can’t wait!
Just a couple more things to do today and then tomorrow I’m off!
xx
Ciera
cierasunshine 